220 THE TREND OF THE RACE 
opportunity presents itself of offering them a double area in the 
‘Kingdom’ of Poland.” And the author quotes with approval a 
statement of Sontag (Archiv fur innere Kolonization, 7, H. 5) 
“Tf the German empire needs new land adapted for settlement 
in order not to let its people stifle for want of room and in order 
greatly to increase the strength of its rural population, then 
indeed must we take this land if a war which we are compelled to 
enter upon offers us the opportunity. But—and this must be the 
foremost consideration in the matter—new land must be made 
free from a population which would detract from our national 
and political character, and which would only add new trouble to 
the difficulties already present in our eastern and western boun- 
daries, and above all also the danger of a racial deterioration of 
the mass of our own people.” 
Victory, according to Holle and Sontag, must not be allowed 
to become sterile from the viewpoint of extending the race of the 
conquerors. The much fostered persuasion of racial superiority 
which appeals so powerfully to the German mind would have had 
in the event of victory no small share in determining the policy of 
the Germans in dealing with the peoples over whom they were 
victors. Other peoples are not to be regarded as having rights to 
be respected, but as so much human material of an inferior sort 
who, in the interests of biological evolution, should be supplanted 
by the superior blood of the Teutonic race. ‘‘A nation,” says 
Klaus Wagner, ‘‘even when her national and fundamental inter- 
ests do not coincide with those of another nation, still must rudely 
destroy this people’s highest interests, must indeed remorselessly 
cut off from this foreign people the means of living for the future. 
It is a great powerful nation which overturns a less courageous 
and degenerate people and takes its territory fromit.... The 
great nation needs new territory. Therefore it must spread out 
over foreign soil, and must displace strangers with the power of 
the sword.” 
We have lived past the day when war is waged as ‘‘a grand 
pastime.” 
